


Ishmael in his Coffin

by alestar



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 07:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17055524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: Since they'd started fucking, which was about three days after they'd met, the harpoon jokes had been pretty much constant-- but the skills really did transfer.Hashtag coffin porn, hashtag sea blowie.





	Ishmael in his Coffin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jougetsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jougetsu/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Jougetsu! I was so delighted to read your request letter, as you and I are clearly brain-twins with respect to both Moby-Dick and kink requests. Sorry this is not longer and more comprehensive, but just let your mind wander. 🧡

_Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life._  
\-- Herman Melville, _Moby-Dick_

 

The hammocks were strung up below-decks, dangling from the ceiling like spider cocoons from rope cobwebs, swaying faintly with the ship.  They were empty in the late morning-- for below them near the stowage chests, still on light-duty in his convalescence, Queequeg was laid out in his coffin, leaned back on a pillow, propped on a wall of the box, whittling a block of wood.  

Ishmael ducked below the row of hammocks to sit cross-legged on the floor of the cabin.  With a sigh, he pulled off his woolen cap and leaned back against the funereal bunk.

"I wish you would stop this," he said.

Queequeg didn't look up from his carving, but a corner of his mouth curved up.  

"It fit-a me," he said.  "Good cozy."

"It's morbid."  Queequeg wouldn't know the word _morbid_ , probably, but Ishmael's position would be clear without it: he'd been lodging the complaint for a week now.  It seemed to register for Queequeg as a quaint American sensitivity, his spouse's displeasure at seeing him laze about in a coffin.  "You're not even sick anymore."

Queequeg's half-smile grew wider, and he glanced up to look at Ishmael's disconsolate face.  He placed his knife and wooden block on the floor, away from Ishmael, then waved Ishmael forward.  "Good cozy," he said again. "You see."

"I'm not getting into your coffin," Ishmael said, scowling, but Queequeg grabbed at his sleeve and tugged.

"You see," he insisted.

Ishmael huffed, but he unfolded himself from the floor, shrugged off his jacket, and with Queequeg's help he climbed into the makeshift berth.  He maneuvered himself beneath the coffin lid, which was angled perpendicularly over the box to become a sort of table, and settled down onto the bunched sailcloth that padded the bottom. He leaned back against Queequeg's bare chest, resting in the V of his thighs, letting Queequeg's arms settle around his waist.  Even with the weight Queequeg had lost during his fever, the nudging of hip and rib against Ishmael's back, Ishmael had to admit that it was, in fact, comfortable. It smelled like dry, unvarnished wood and like Queequeg.

Ishmael turned his head to press his cheek against Queequeg's bare shoulder.  Queequeg's palm flattened over Ishmael's stomach, warm through the flannel of his shirt.  He tipped his face into Ishmael's hair.

"Fit-a good," he murmured.

Ishmael exhaled a long sigh. He was always doing that, reportedly, though Queequeg never commented on it.   _Always staring about and sighing_ , a grizzled old Scotsman had teased a few weeks ago, _like yer sad to have yer breath leave ye._

And he supposed he was sad for it.  Driven to take in too much, but with not enough lung to hold it forever; playing at the regular cycles of life, in and out, but with an irregular rhythm; still as death one moment, starving for air in the next.  He was sad for what he had nearly lost, for what he might still yet lose. There seemed a great deal to be sad about.

Queequeg pulled an arm out from under Ishmael's so that he could touch the open collar of Ishmael's shirt, dragging his hand up along the exposed cord of Ishmael's neck until it reached the sensitive skin behind Ishmael's ear.  Queequeg tilted down to press his nose there.

Queequeg rarely kissed him, and never on the mouth-- though he never flinched away from Ishmael's kisses, which were numerous.  Ishmael would kiss Queequeg frantically, sometimes, even when they only had a moment or two in the dark of the ship's hold; sometimes supplicating, like Queequeg to his idol, as he'd done when Queequeg was weak with fever; sometimes just an affectionate press against Queequeg's cheek, if he could sneak it, as they were climbing into their hammocks at night. 

The first time Ishmael had kissed him on the mouth he'd been coming, shaking over top of the other man during a shore-leave in Gibraltar, and he'd pressed kisses to his shoulder, his jaw, his cheek, then his mouth, almost arbitrarily, huffing breaths through his open mouth, drawing one of Queequeg's lips between his.  Queequeg had only held Ishmael to him, panting, hips moving as he sought his own release-- but later he'd quirked an eyebrow at Ishmael and touched a hand to his grinning mouth and said, "Now we both cannibal?" He had not made a similar joke the first time Ishmael took Queequeg's cock in his mouth, presumably because that was too uncomfortable a thought and he had wanted the practice to continue.  He'd taken more notice of Ishmael's mouth after that, though, when they were together, regarding it perhaps as more than merely the instrument of Ishmael's alien kisses and his half-intelligible philosophical carrying-on.

Now, he ran the slender line of his nose over the slope of Ishmael's ear, stroking his thumb up and down the side of Ishmael's neck. 

Ishmael reached up behind him to cup Queequeg's head.  Queequeg hadn't shaved his head since he'd fallen ill, so the hair beneath his topknot had grown in, a little, faint but soft under Ishmael's fingers.  The topknot itself was currently unbound, and it fell in long, dark waves, curling over his brow and jaw like a woman's. Ishmael scritched against his scalp, feeling the vibration as Queequeg hummed appreciatively. 

Several minutes passed as they touched each other: Queequeg stroking long fingers down Ishmael's throat, into the collar of his shirt and along his collarbone, nosing at Ishmael's ear and jaw; Ishmael curving his hand into Queequeg's hair, dragging his fingernails along his skull.  Ishmael could feel the growing press of Queequeg's erection in the small of his back. He sighed again and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Queequeg's shoulder.

Queequeg shifted beneath him, then, moving so that Ishmael had to sit up straighter.  He pulled the suspenders off Ishmael's shoulders, and then both of his hands were back at Ishmael's waist, under Ishmael's arms, tugging up the hem of his shirt and thumbing at the buttons of his trousers. 

The long black-walnut coffin lid spread out in front of them, carved with a replica of Queequeg's tattoos-- a mass of swirls that curled wildly and unpredictably in different directions, like a panorama of troubled waters.  There were notches along the side where Queequeg had cut off the leather hinges. The lid shadowed Ishmael from abdomen to knee, helped along by the dim oil-lamp lighting of the cabin; Ishmael watched Queequeg reach into the shadows, into the open panel of his dark canvas trousers, and pull out his cock, and then he let his eyes fall closed. 

One of Queequeg's hands spread over the skin of Ishmael's bare stomach, and the other stroked him, up and down, while Ishmael leaned back against Queequeg's chest, heart racing.  Since they'd started fucking, which was about three days after they'd met, the harpoon jokes had been pretty much constant-- but the skills really did transfer. He was dexterous and strong and watchful, and even without sperm oil to slick them, he could make Ishmael shake and choke with how good it felt.  Queequeg thumbed at the head, still nuzzling behind Ishmael's ear. Ishmael rocked his hips a little.

They'd already been alone in the cabin for several minutes, and they weren't guaranteed privacy of any degree, at any time; it was, in fact, likelier than not that someone would come in to lie down or rifle through his stowage chest.  If they saw Ishmael leaned in Queequeg's embrace, they might write it off to the eccentricity of the savage, that dimly-lit place where white men often hid themselves, or to the loneliness of sea life, but from Ishmael's face, with Queequeg's hand on him, it would be clear that Queequeg was-- having him.

Most of the sailors knew about them, though, if not about the specific emotional aspect-- that is to say, their marriage.  Hierarchies spread in a ship's crew far beyond those codified, as they did in any population, and sometimes sex was part of those hierarchies.  If a sailor were to come in and climb into his hammock, and see Queequeg folded around Ishmael, and hear the noises Ishmael made, he would not be terribly surprised.  Ishmael was no-one-- a seasoned whaler but young and generic-- while Queequeg was a master harpooner, a genius of wood and iron, and a prince in his own land besides. In the belly of a ship, it was Queequeg's right to have Ishmael however he wanted him.

Ishmael should have been shamed, he supposed, to be seen as owned or mastered in that way, but Queequeg seemed decided on the matter of Ishmael, and devoted to him, and it was impossible to not be proud of that. It was impossible to not be proud of Queequeg's broad shoulders, his strange beauty, his skill; his good humor when he was smoking his pipe on deck versus the focus and solemnity in his face when he was crouched in his place on the bow of a whale-boat.  Ishmael was little better than a common laborer, but Queequeg was a whale-killer. His murder made oil for the people, and the oil made light.

Queequeg scratched fingernails through the hair on Ishmael's stomach as his other hand worked him, his fingers wet from where Ishmael leaked against them.  Ishmael sucked in a breath. "Sweet Christ," he said.

"You think he sweet," Queequeg said.  He nosed at Ishmael's hairline. "He take-a care you like me?"

Ishmael choked out a laugh, half-appalled.

All sailors were blasphemers, but Queequeg was the worst-- not for violence of expression but for his stolid refusal to treat the Christian deities as both historical _and_ angelic.  If he were a Christian, there were no doubt he would have long ago been struck dead by lightning; but he'd been given a pass, it seemed, for he continued to say horrible things in his barbarian English, usually while holding Ishmael's cock in his strong, brown hand.

"No," Ishmael conceded, arching back against Queequeg's shoulder.  "Not like you."

The hand on Ishmael's stomach withdrew; he ran it along Ishmael's clothed arm, up to his cheek, then set two fingers against Ishmael's mouth.  Ishmael's lips were already parted around the puffs of breath that Queequeg was wringing out of him, and he tipped forward, opening around Queequeg's fingers, swallowing them down.  

Queequeg muttered something in his own tongue.  Ishmael knew a little Rokovokan, but only single words, nouns and adjectives handed fondly to him, usually post-coitally, as Queequeg touched him: _mouth, spunk, cock; warm, pretty, wet_.  Queequeg gave Ishmael pieces of his past like an explorer might give a sextant to an inland savage-- indulging the other's curiosity, with no expectation that he would be able to make use of the mechanism. 

Still, the roll of Queequeg's hardness against Ishmael's back was clear enough.  His fingers tasted like sea-spray, the tobacco from his pipe, the leather wrapping on the handle of his whittling knife.  Ishmael pushed his knees wider, as wide as they would go, probably digging Queequeg's legs uncomfortably into the walls of the coffin, and arched his hips, bent his neck, letting Queequeg fuck his mouth with his hand. 

Queequeg was pushing himself against Ishmael, though the angle couldn't have been comfortable or satisfying, and Ishmael tried to help, tried to rock against him even as he pushed into the friction, the careful tightness of Queequeg's fist.  He found his skull pressed back into the dip of Queequeg's collar-- he was held steady from midship to bow, like that, by those three points of pressure: Queequeg's cock and two hands.

There was a short, hard pant of breath behind him, and Ishmael reached down to still the hand on his erection, though he thrust into it once, twice more before he could stop himself.  He took several breaths, squeezing Queequeg's fingers around him while Queequeg waited, even as Ishmael could feel the shallow, rapid movement of his chest behind him.

Then Ishmael shifted, turned, careful not to dislodge the coffin lid, until he was front-to-front with Queequeg, straddling his waist, while Queequeg watched him with curious eyes.

It was hard to know what he saw when he looked at Ishmael.  What would hold the attention of a cannibal prince? A pale able-bodied seaman, an American with no coin, who sighed too much, who would go for days without talking and then talk endlessly, in private, in long ruminations on the politics of fishing-rights or the structure of dolphin society or the horrible vision of a volcano Ishmael saw in the clouds the other day. 

It was hard to know why they had melted together the way they had, that first day at the inn in New Bedford-- why Queequeg had curled around him in their bed, and why Ishmael had allowed it, and then, later, why Ishmael had reached back to pull him closer.  Whatever Yojo had told Queequeg about him, though, they had locked together-- and no matter what happened in the months or years ahead, they would not return to what they'd been before.

Ishmael crouched down over Queequeg and then carefully scooted back, underneath the coffin lid, until he was folded not uncomfortably amid Queequeg's legs, over the outline of Queequeg's erection through his cotton trousers.  He ignored the front-fall panel and in the dimness he felt for the carved whale-bone buttons at the waist. Queequeg liked it slow and firm, the wet squeeze of Ishmael's mouth, the broad flat of his tongue, while Ishmael ran fingers over his balls and the insides of his legs, until the end, when Ishmael would work him with his fist, pumping his seed into his throat.  He slid the buttons through their holes, then pulled the whole kit over Queequeg's hips, down his legs, off his feet, while Queequeg lifted, shimmied, careful of his knees around Ishmael's face, of his feet around Ishmael's groin.

Then Ishmael resettled himself, and with a sigh he pressed Queequeg's cock against his cheek, a silken blood-hot weight against his clean-shaven skin.  He turned and stroked his tongue up along the length, and he felt Queequeg shift, breathing deep, widening his legs.

Ishmael opened up around him, slid over him, and a tremor went through them both-- a shiver, like the shiver of someone walking one's future grave, which was fitting enough, given the setting. 

There was something massive about it-- crouched down in the hot, damp darkness of the coffin; cramped, boxed in; taking Queequeg's erection into his mouth.  Queequeg set a hand against Ishmael's jaw, another in his hair, and two of his fingers were wet with Ishmael's spit.

There was enough room in the tight space for Ishmael to move his hand between Queequeg's legs while his mouth worked on him-- brushing the backs of his fingers over the tender skin of his inner thigh, over his heavy balls as Queequeg twitched beneath him.  The other hand he closed around himself, squeezing with tight, compressed rolls of his hips. In their shuffling, the sailcloth at the bottom of the coffin had bunched, and Ishmael's knuckles scraped against the rough woodgrain of the coffin floor. He moaned around Queequeg's cock-- and he couldn't see the room, so there was no way to know whether they were still alone in the cabin, but Queequeg didn't move to hush him, only kept his hand where it was, dug into Ishmael's hair, tightening every time Ishmael sank onto him.

He couldn't see well in the shadows, but the tight enclosed space made up for the lack with his other senses.  The rough scratch of the wood and sailcloth; his hand moving up the smooth skin of Queequeg's thigh into the coarse hair at the base of his cock, and then up, grasping him, stroking him; the uncirculated air thick with the smell of Queequeg's musk and Ishmael's saliva; the reverberating sound of Ishmael sucking and breathing.  Ishmael thought of filling up with it-- the smell and feel and taste filling him up like wind in a sail, Ishmael a scrap of fabric moved by a great current of the earth. He closed his eyes as Queequeg tightened his hand in Ishmael's hair and came and came.

Ishmael swallowed until Queequeg's clenched thighs relaxed, then he gave himself a moment to pant against Queequeg's hip in the darkness.  Then he was shuffling forward again, shifting the heavy walnut lid back so that he could straddle Queequeg's waist, one hand vise-like around himself, the other hand inside his trousers, wet with spit, cupping his balls, resting through the cotton against Queequeg's spent but still hard cock.  Queequeg held Ishmael's shirt out of the way and squeezed his thigh, petting up and down, watching Ishmael stroke himself feverishly.

There was something decidedly obscene about jacking his cock through the front panel of his trousers, but it was how they usually did it.  They rarely had the luxury of nakedness, or even of lying down, outside of shore leave-- so it was almost always the two of them leaned together against a wall in the hold, Queequeg holding him by the hip or by the shoulder while they stroked themselves or ground together through their open panels.  Once, while they were sitting together on deck, passing Queequeg's pipe between them, Ishmael had compared it to two neighbors leaning out their windows to greet each other, and Queequeg had laughed while Ishmael watched him, grinning.

Queequeg darted a look up at Ishmael's face and hung there even as Ishmael bowed forward, his dark eyes on Ishmael's gathered brow, probably, his open panting mouth.  "Oh god, oh fuck," Ishmael said. He curled until his forehead was against Queequeg's jaw. He breathed against Queequeg's throat with his eyes screwed shut, while Queequeg's hands slid up the bare skin of his waist.  There was a swirl of thoughts at the last, a stuttering inside Ishmael's mind-- _death, coffin, berth, birth_ \-- and then he was coming, pleasure rushing into his limbs, pounding through him like seawater through a cracked hull. 

When the tremors in Ishmael's hips quieted, he settled down onto Queequeg's lap, catching his breath.  His eyes stayed closed, but he felt a hand on the back of his neck, then the tip of Queequeg's nose traveling up the bridge of Ishmael's, caressing along his eyebrow, down to nudge at his cheek. When he had the lung for it, Ishmael huffed a faint laugh, and though his eyes were closed he could feel Queequeg's answering smile against his face. 

"Fine," he said.

They had pushed their luck already, where privacy was concerned.  Ishmael sat up, then climbed out of the coffin. He rebuttoned the front panel of his trousers, holding the fabric away from himself to keep it dry, and waddled awkwardly over to his stowage chest.  He rummaged around until he found a towel and an old threadbare handkerchief.

He tucked the latter around himself inside his trousers, and the towel he brought over to Queequeg, who was watching Ishmael with a look of contentment, naked, dark hair pushed behind one ear, arms thrown over the sides of the coffin.  Ishmael kneeled next to the makeshift bed with a wry smile.

There were trails of spunk on Queequeg's stomach and chest, milky streaks against the dark, ornate ribbons of Queequeg's tattoos, catching the light of the lamps.  It was a blasphemy, probably, Ishmael's spilled seed against that holy writing-- but Queequeg tolerated Ishmael's insults with the same warm irony with which Ishmael tolerated his.  Ishmael sighed, touching his towel to Queequeg's skin. Their marriage was full of blasphemies, he supposed. Their obscenities full of love, and their coffin full of life.


End file.
